Tuesday, August 19, 2014

This is The Giver at its best...save the chase sequences for Divergent.

Young adult (or YA) dystopian thrillers are quite prevalent
of late with the popularity of The Hunger Games series to the point that many
films, such as Divergent, don’t feel very different. Because of this popularity, it was inevitable
that Lois Lowry’s beloved novel The Giver would be up for adaptation. Fans of the book will likely come away
pleased (as long as they are willing to accept the inevitable changes an
adaptation brings), though regular audiences might not see enough here to
differentiate this from other properties.
The Giver deserves a bit of attention, however, if for no other reason
than the fact that the filmmakers refrained from tacking on a love triangle.

The Giver is similar to other properties (or other
properties are similar to it, since the book was written long before most of
the other franchises) in that it takes place in a vaguely futuristic society in
which individualism is seen as dangerous, and everyone should accept whatever
fate the elders hand down to them. The
other mainstay of YA dystopian thrillers concerns the past. In films like The Hunger Games or
Divergent the characters know of a past that led them to their “harmonious”
societies, but it is a fictionalized past drilled into them by the ruling
class. In The Giver, they simply don’t
know about the past…and don’t want to.
It was decided that only one person, the Receiver of Memory, will keep
all of humanity’s memories (good and bad) as a way to guide the elders so that
the same mistakes are never made again.

This makes the central idea behind The Giver compelling,
both on the screen and page. The message
that the world, no matter how ordered and peaceful, isn’t worth living in if
actual humanity ceases to exist is important, especially for younger viewers. In fact, it might be even more worthwhile for
older viewers who might be jaded about how awful the real world can often be
since most can probably agree that our sometimes crappy reality is much more
worthwhile than a society in which we have family “units,” receive daily
“injections” that destroy our emotions, and are allotted “comfort objects” as
children.

Director Phillip Noyce (Salt) does an excellent job of
making the world of The Giver the type of place a modern-day audience member
would despise. First off, it’s in black
and white. The world itself, not just
the movie. In an effort to create
“sameness,” the creators of this society removed color along with memory,
freedom, independence, and pretty much anything else that makes life enjoyable. I was happy to find that the bulk of the
movie is in black and white. I was
worried they would change it up fearing that teens would avoid a black and
white movie (the previews, however, were almost completely in color). The stark images of this society capture the
mood of the book.

Of course, any adaptation of a book is going to include
changes to the source material. I was
okay with most of the changes, but a few hurt the movie more than helped
it. First off, the attempt to add action
to the climax of the film felt like pandering to an audience used to brutal
fight scenes in their YA movies. It
didn’t look very good, and it just prolonged the movie rather than add
suspense. Second, and more importantly,
it changed the world a bit in that it made it seem like more people knew about
the past other than the Receiver and the Giver, and regular people seemed to be
capable of feeling emotions at times, even if they had their injections. All of this was done to add conflict, but
breaking the rules of the established world weakens and/or alters the film’s
message. But perhaps I’m just being
nitpicky since I read the book very recently.

Slight issues aside, The Giver still sets itself apart
from the rest as a more thoughtful film.
This is helped immensely by the casting of Jeff Bridges as the Giver. He looks a bit goofy (he tends to stare
around with his mouth open) at times, but in his scenes with the Receiver
(Brenton Thwaites, who holds his own in scenes with Bridges but seems to be on
autopilot in the rest of the film) Bridges shows that he was the best choice
for the role. His voice is naturally
tailored to deliver sage-like advice. In
fact, the film’s biggest flaw is that there are too few moments between Bridges
and Thwaites. It seems that the film is
in too big of a hurry to insert some unnecessary action. Ironically, those action moments are
incredibly boring compared to the scenes with Bridges in a library. Ten more minutes of memory sharing with
Bridges would’ve have improved the film immensely.

The rest of the cast is impressive, featuring Alexander
Skarsgard, Katie Holmes, and Meryl Streep.
(Oh, and Taylor Swift is in the film for no discernible reason.) Skarsgard and Holmes are fine as the
Receiver’s brain-washed parents, and Streep is fine, but she seems
unnecessary. For one thing, her
character, the Chief Elder, barely exists in the book, yet here she is given
the villain role. It would have been
more effective if the villain had remained the faceless “Sameness” that pervaded
society. Also, it isn’t a good sign that
her character first appears as a hologram.
It made me feel like the rest of her performance, and character in
general, was phone in.

The Giver, despite its flaws, ultimately stands apart from
the rest of the pack of YA stories. Its
message is similar, but dealt with in a more somber fashion. In fact, the film is only weak when it tries
to be like the films it should be striving to be different than. This movie was never going to out-gross or
replace The Hunger Games, so it’s unfortunate that the filmmakers even
tried. Despite itself, The Giver is a
movie worth seeing, and, more importantly, thinking about.

Random Thoughts

I'm just going to ramble a bit about differences and interpretations that bothered me a little bit.

The mopeds or whatever were silly. So was the Asher/drone scene. It just took the whole escape-with-a-baby thing (which is pretty silly already) about five steps too far. I can't help but laugh at the image of Brenton Thwaites (or his CG approximation) plunging into rapids clutching a baby.

Meryl Streep flat out mentions war. How does she know about war? If she's so afraid of information getting out, why allow the Giver to live at all? Just kill him...problem solved.

I get the sled theme and all, but that ridiculous sled ride on lunch trays (or whatever they were) looked like garbage.

This movie would have just been so much better had they not felt the need to pep it up. It's as if someone was on set saying, "This for teenagers! Remember that! Every ten minutes someone either needs to do something slightly sexual or violent or both! Otherwise everyone will already fall asleep! Don't give me that look! I'm already letting you do the artsy-fartsy black and white!" Obviously I'm joking a bit, but it felt that way every time some random moment like that happened. I get that the book isn't action-packed, but people obviously read it without throwing it down because of the lack of action. I mean, if there can be teenage movie about romance that don't have tacked on action sequences, why can't teenage movies be about society and humanity without tacked on action sequences?

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

*I say "possibly best" because I need to let the movie sink in for a while before I claim it to be the best among a lot of very entertaining movies.

And you thought Thor was the weirdest part of the Marvel
movie franchise. As the superhero movies
have branched out beyond Earth in recent years with the Thor films and The
Avengers, I wondered how far mainstream audiences would go with Marvel into deep
sci-fi territory. Very far, it turns
out. Guardians of the Galaxy (which I
will refer to as GotG from here on out because I’m lazy) presents an entirely
new group of superheroes who only comic book fans will recognize in an entirely
alien setting. That’s exactly the kind
of stuff I like, but I assumed regular audiences wouldn’t be so thrilled since
they wouldn’t have an iconic character to get behind. It turns out audiences and critics alike will
go with a movie as long as it’s one of the most fun films of the summer. (Side note: This shouldn’t be all that
surprising since Star Wars could be described the exact same way, and people
seemed to like that. I would point out,
however, that “Star Wars” didn’t get the marketing blitz that GotG did.)

GotG works so well because the titular galaxy it takes
place in is so large and diverse. Like
most deep sci-fi works, there are many worlds in GotG, so when one is
threatened it’s not as big of a deal as it normally is in a film. What this means is that the film can still be
fun while the stakes are quite high.
Characters can joke around at the direst of moments, and it feels
normal. That wouldn’t work if someone
was trying to stop a nuke from blowing up America
or something. But when the planet on the
line is Xandar, then who cares if we’re laughing while it is potentially
destroyed? (No offense to the fictional
Xandarians.)

A goofy sci-fi action film needs a goofy cast of characters
to inhabit it and GotG definitely has that covered. This might just be the high of recently
watching and loving this movie, but I’m leaning towards the Guardians over the
Avengers at this point. The group is led
by Peter Quill, AKA Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), a kind of Indiana Jones/Han Solo
hybrid. He is joined by Gamora (Zoe
Saldana), a green-skinned step-daughter of evil titan Thanos (and she’s not the
weirdest member of the group by a long shot…); Drax (Dave Bautista), a
literally literal (meaning he takes everything people say literally) vengeance
seeking hulk; Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), a genetically-altered raccoon
who can talk and is a weapons specialist; and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), a
living tree that can talk, sort of (he only says, “I am Groot”). With a group like this, the movie pretty much
has to be goofy and fun.

Marvel has succeeded with all of these increasingly weird
properties for multiple reasons. The
cast is usually spot-on, they spend plenty of money for each film, but, most
importantly, they hand off the riskiest films to fellow geeks. Joss Whedon was the perfect choice to helm
The Avengers, and lesser-known geek-friendly writer-director (hey, that’s the
first time I’ve used three hyphenates in a row!) James Gunn is equally perfect
for GotG. I am a huge fan of Gunn’s
first feature, Slither, so I knew when he got this job that GotG would be
something special. Hats off to Marvel
for handing off their properties to people who know what they’re doing. By the way, if you haven’t seen Slither, check it out.

Gunn (and co-screenwriter Nicole Perlman) bring a great
sense of humor and nostalgia to the film that makes it stand out even more from
the “traditional” Marvel properties. All
of the films in the series have their comedic elements, but GotG is a bit
different in that it’s a bit more self-aware.
An example of this would be the fact that Star Lord refers to the
mysterious orb at the center of the movie (like the Tesseract or Aether from
other films) as having an “Ark of the Covenant vibe” essentially saying the
film is a bit like Indiana Jones and these movies always involve some
mysterious powerful substance that is never clearly defined. My least favorite part of all of these films
are the Infinity Stones for the very reason that they’re mysterious, are simply
called “powerful,” and bad guys want them for bad reasons. It’s just too vague and uninteresting. GotG at least calls itself out for it,
which makes it easier to stomach. Moving
on, the nostalgia aspect sets the film apart even more. Star Lord is taken from Earth in 1988 and
happens to have an “Awesome Mix Tape” and a Walkman with him. This allows the film to be scored to music
from the late 70s and early 80s. The
contradictory nature of that music set to sci-fi action and locales is funny
and kind of cool, really. And since Star
Lord is the only character from Earth (that we see, anyway), he gets to do some
Marty McFly-esque referencing as he discusses Footloose in a mythical fashion
and refers to John Stamos as a famous outlaw.

Much of the humor is thanks to the delivery of the
cast. Pratt is a natural as Star
Lord. He has received the most attention
for getting in such great shape for the role, and that is impressive, but what
makes him stand out in a Marvel movie is his delivery of goofiness, which isn’t
surprising given his work on Parks & Recreation. Regardless of why he gets recognition, he
definitely deserves it and carries the film easily. Saldana is fine as Gamora though the tough
sci-fi girl role she always plays is wearing kind of thin. Dave Bautista surprised me the most with his
matter of fact delivery. The fact that
he takes everything literally made for some of the funniest moments. The voice work for Rocket and Groot is fine,
but what’s more impressive about these characters is that they ended up being
the most sympathetic members of the group, and they were created through motion
capture.

GotG is still an action film, though the action feels like
an afterthought. That’s not to say there
aren’t plenty of impressive fights and whatnot, it’s just that, at this point,
we’ve seen a world or galaxy or whatever saved from annihilation by some vague
cosmic power so many times that it’s no big deal. How many times can we see a giant ship of
some kind crash into stuff before we get kind of bored with it? That’s really not a knock against the movie;
it’s just that this film handles everything else so much more interestingly
that the action isn’t the focus.

Guardians of the Galaxy (I’ll write it out one more time)
is also unique in that almost everyone seems to love it. That is truly refreshing because I am very
used to loving a movie only to see the message boards filled with hate (to be
fair, that’s still happening, but it seems much lighter than usual for a movie
this big). That said, I don’t think
everyone will love this, and I certainly don’t recommend it to everyone. The first fifteen minutes of the film involve
so many different extremely sci-fi settings and situations that it starts to
sound like gibberish. That could
possibly put people off of this movie.
If you can get past that kind of stuff, however, I think there is a
movie here for everyone. It looks pretty
crazy, but it offers the kind of fun entertainment that almost anyone can
enjoy. Now let’s see if The Avengers:
Age of Ultron can top this next year.
Honestly, I don’t see how it can.

South Korean filmmakers have been producing some great,
memorable films for a long time now but only recently has Hollywood
invited them to create English-language debuts.
Unfortunately, the track record of the first releases has been
disappointing. Kim Jee-woon (I Saw the
Devil) made The Last Stand, a goofy (in a good way), but underwhelming
Schwarzenegger comeback film. Park
Chan-wook (Oldboy) made Stoker, which was certainly a unique and
interesting film, but it was pretty much abandoned by the studio. Now, and this is the most unfortunate of the
three, Bong Joon-ho (The Host) has made Snowpiercer, an ambitious
post-apocalyptic film that is equal parts entertaining and
thought-provoking. What’s unfortunate
about this is that it spent months in limbo as The Weinstein Company considered
editing it so Americans could “understand” it (thankfully, the final release is
the director’s version) and, despite the film making over $80 million overseas,
the widest release the film had in America was around 350 theaters a few weeks
ago. In other words, this film wasn’t
given a chance to become traditionally successful in America
because it was assumed mass audiences wouldn’t get it, like it, etc. Here’s where the good news comes in,
however. Rather than expand to theaters
nationwide, the film was released on demand (for roughly the same price as a
theater ticket). While I would much
rather have seen this on the big screen, I was still very appreciative to get a
chance to watch it at all. More importantly,
for those of you who don’t venture to the theater very often, you have a chance
to check out a unique sci-fi film in your living room. Now for the actual review of Snowpiercer.

Post-apocalyptic movies are almost too common these days, so
a film in the genre needs to set itself apart.
Snowpiercer easily does that as it’s about the last of humanity on a
frozen Earth surviving on a train (the titular Snowpiercer) that never
stops. Because of this premise (based on
a French graphic novel), some people might be turned away. Obviously some suspension of disbelief is
required (as it is for nearly all movies, I might add). The logistics of how it all works could
easily distract the viewer from the film, but I was impressed with the world
Bong Joon-ho created. But, if the
message boards at IMDb.com are any indicator, some people can’t get past
nitpicking the premise. My advice is to
just go with it.

The reason that the film takes place on a train is to allow
for an easy metaphor for humanity. Even
with the world essentially dead, there are still social classes on the train:
poor in the back, rich in the front. But
the film is more than just a “rich people are evil” metaphor. We’ve seen that scenario played out in film
and reality enough anyway. Snowpiercer made me think more about humanity in general.
It made me think about how some of us go about our daily grind and try
not to think about the less fortunate.
Or decide that people are simply meant to inhabit certain stations of
the social ladder. What stuck out to me
more than anything is how the film demonstrates on a small scale how humanity
works things out (usually through awful actions) by being only slightly nudged
into action. The conspiracy theorist in
me sometimes likes to imagine that there is a small, powerful group of people
out there controlling the world and causing wars and atrocity behind the
scenes. That part of me got into this
film as it showed that happening on the smaller scale of a train.

The action of Snowpiercer is that of a revolution
spearheaded by Curtis (Chris Evans) who has spent equal parts of life on Earth
and the train (seventeen years each).
The film opens on the back section at its worst. People are crammed into the back cars, fed
gelatinous “protein bars,” and subjugated by the front section. Their children are sometimes taken away never
to be seen again without explanation.
Severe punishments are doled out for any rebellious action (there is a
disturbing limb removal early on). Life
is awful for everyone, and they’ve reached their breaking point. Not to spoil anything, but a revolution does
occur fairly early in the film, and Snowpiercer becomes equals parts action
film and social commentary.

The action and
overall look of the film affected me the most.
The world Bong Joon-ho created for this train is amazing. The cobbled together living quarters of the
back of the train contrast greatly with the front cars, which is probably the
easiest feat of the film (just look at The Hunger Games, Elysium, etc. for
more examples of extreme class differences).
More impressively, this world feels real and lived in. There is a history of failed revolutions and
trying times that is only referenced but feels present in each character. Since the film takes place on a train, it
allows for some great framing in scenes featuring the powerful speaking to the
downtrodden. You get to see all of the
miserable faces while someone in power, like Tilda Swinton’s Mason, speaks to
them about accepting their place in life…and the train. All of this is and the excellent, brutal
action is set to diverse music by Marco Beltrami. It all just comes together in a unique way
for this film, and all involved deserve credit, like the creators of the source
material and co-screenwriter Kelly Masterson.

Snowpiercer is my favorite film of the year (so far) for
three reasons beyond the aforementioned praise I’ve heaped upon it: the
absurdity factor, its similarity to the Silo series by author Hugh Howey and
the Bioshock video game series, and the unpredictability of it all. First, the absurd. As I mentioned before, many people who take
issue with this film immediately attack the premise which they find too
implausible. Defenders of the film
usually state that you should accept the “problems” so the metaphor of society
through train can work, but I defend the absurdity of the premise on the
grounds that the film acknowledges it.
There are many moments that could leave you scratching your head (the
use of a fish before a fight, a ridiculous shootout across train cars,
impromptu holiday celebrations in otherwise serious fights, Tilda Swinton’s
strange mannerisms and dialogue, etc.).
These moments gave the film some much needed levity at times, made the
film unique, and showed just how messed up the human race could get if forced
to survive on a train for years. That,
perhaps, is most important to me: showing that this world is not the old
one. A new, weird, terrible, absurd
world has been created. It’s enough to
make you wonder if you want anybody to survive which is certainly a credit to
the ideas of the film. Secondly, the
Silo and Bioshock series are near and dear to me, and since there is no
film version of either (yet), Snowpiercer appealed to me because I found it
to be a spiritual sibling of those stories of failed utopias, world-building
gone wrong, and revolution. Finally,
this was a film that I didn’t have figured out early on. Not that there aren’t movies that completely
confuse me (hello, Holy Motors), but when it comes to movies about social
injustices or sci-fi struggles, I can usually guess where it’s going to end up
and who’s going to end up there. With
Snowpiercer, the majority of my expectations were upended by the end of the
film. I enjoy unpredictability in a
movie more than anything because after watching so many, it’s easy to end up on
autopilot as you watch, especially if you’re watching at home. But the surprises of this film kept me glued
to it as if I were in the theater. So I
suppose they knew what they were doing when they released it on demand.

My focus on the weirdness and style of the film should not
be seen as a slight against the actors.
Chris Evans is still in action mode here, but he gets plenty of strong
character moments which he handles very well.
Plus, he pulls off the revolutionary look very convincingly. John Hurt is perfectly cast in a mentor
role. Tilda Swinton is likewise a great
choice for the quirky Mason. Kang-ho
Song and Ah-sung Ko are fantastic as a father-daughter duo. I could go on and on; the point is that there
is not a weak point in the diverse cast.

That’s about all there is to say about this film (as if I
haven’t gone on long enough). I
typically don’t like to write this much about a film (I like to keep it about
half this length), but when I see a movie that works on so many levels for me
it gets me excited about writing reviews in general again, especially since
many people might not even be aware of this movie. So if you’re into sci-fi, social struggle
metaphors, cool action, or just weird movies in general, check Snowpiercer out. You don’t even need to move from
your couch to do it, either, so stop reading me gush about it, and watch it for
yourself.